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The comfort zone of the future or dehabituation | Prof. Dr. Gunter Dueck | TEDxRheinMain

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    Yeah, I read the theme,
    "Subject to Change".
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    They always capitalize "Change" now.
    If you work in a big company,
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    they say, "Everything has to change,
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    not a stone must be left standing.
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    We will reorganize everything
    from the bottom up.
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    But don't worry, your work
    won't be affected."
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    (Laughter)
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    And they're right.
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    You just have to work a little bit faster.
    Your salary goes down just a bit, but ...
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    "Minor changes."
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    And certain types of people want
    to maintain the situation somehow
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    while other types, usually from
    the top down, rant and rave and say,
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    "You guys are too stubborn.
    You must change your approach."
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    Everyone says that.
    Well ... it's not that easy.
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    Managers want us to
    change our approach,
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    as do the teachers, our parents,
    Mrs Merkel, everybody.
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    And every time a politician says people
    should change their approach,
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    you realize he has already given up
    any hope that he'll make it.
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    Because our approach
    won't change like that,
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    and in a way, that is
    due to ourselves.
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    I would just like to comment
    on the theory behind this.
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    It's simply the "theory of change."
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    I've just looked this up in a
    normal psychology book,
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    which contains horrible terms
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    that you can see on the first slide.
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    I will simply tell you the bare facts.
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    But I can also do it in a softer way
    so you don't end up scared.
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    So there is this tug of war going on
    between different forces inside humans.
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    There is a famous book "Grundformen
    der Angst" (The Basic Forms of Fears)
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    from the '70s which
    you must have read.
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    Psychologists don’t like it
    as it is a literary masterpiece
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    and describes everything very well,
    it just doesn’t prove anything.
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    But it makes for good conversations.
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    The message of the whole thing is
    that there are two tugs of war
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    of which I will only discuss one
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    as the talk should only have 18 minutes.
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    From left to right: There is
    a kind of obsessive type
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    and a kind of hysterical
    type of person.
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    The obsessive ones want to
    keep everything the same way
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    and the hysterical ones want
    everything to change all the time.
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    There are these two sorts of people.
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    And they argue.
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    Both are more or less unchanging
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    and stay that way,
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    and this is the standard argument.
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    At the moment, the hysterical
    ones are in the majority,
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    or let’s say, "in a higher priority."
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    They are in higher
    salary classes,
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    all those "change managers"
    and consultants
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    who attack us and say
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    that we had to change radically.
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    Basically, they celebrate
    the hysterical principle.
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    I simply took out the characteristics
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    of hysteria and obsession
    for a company once
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    and said that the entire current management
    theory consists of dissing the obsessive type.
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    That's it, basically.
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    It doesn't have any
    intellectual content. (Laughter)
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    There’s another tug of war from
    top to bottom, I'll leave that bit out.
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    It's about the depressed ones who
    always want to do everything in company.
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    It happens.
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    And the schizoid ones
    with high self-confidence,
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    but with a very
    sensitive self-consciousness,
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    type "geek" or "nerd." Right?
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    Super isolated, excellent solitary workers,
    especially at the computer,
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    and from time to time they have to
    make a proud contribution to Google+.
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    (Laughter)
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    But that’s another talk.
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    Today, I am to talk about "change."
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    The depressed ones
    are mostly on Facebook.
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    (Laughter)
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    But that’s true.
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    (Applause)
    (Laughter)
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    Because they have friends there.
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    (Laughter)
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    On Google+ you have opponents.
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    Like a kind of royalty that
    meets up there to duel.
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    This is also an extra talk.
    I will leave that out.
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    Once, I posted the same thing
    on Facebook and on Google+.
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    The depressed ones on Facebook
    said, "You must have read my thoughts."
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    "We love you all", stuff like that.
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    And on Google+,
    "You didn’t read the link anyway!"
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    "Look it up, that’s not new!"
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    Right? On Google+ you get
    completely different answers.
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    These are the different …
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    That explains the contempt of these Google+
    people for Facebook people and vice versa,
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    but as I said earlier, that’s
    another talk, let's drop it.
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    In "Subject to change", only those
    who defy change fight each other.
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    I looked that up in a psychology book
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    in order to make such
    difficult terms a bit softer.
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    That is the short version for now.
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    [Slide, "obsessive"]:
    Tradition, rules, order, unity,
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    and the others say, progress
    and panta rhei. That’s not fair.
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    [Slide, "hysterical": Progress,
    Flow, Accessibilty, Diversity]
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    The hysterical ones arm
    themselves with Greek … stuff,
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    "But you are using foreign words
    that I didn’t even know."
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    (Laughter)
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    But you understand, right?
    I don’t have to explain it any further.
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    I want you to really understand it.
    This is official psychology. It's not my fault.
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    Here are the characteristics: meticulous, ambitious,
    enduring, persistent, clean, rational, and so on.
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    As opposed to: no risk, no fun, impulsive,
    adventurous, loves the show,
    the center of attention – or the stage.
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    (Laughter)
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    Did you read it all?
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    "Shallow, sometimes restless and so on."
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    You can literally taste
    that argument, can't you?
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    These guys say, "You stupid duty monkey, why do
    you always do the same things?" – from right to left.
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    "You blockhead always go home on time
    to your garden plot, and keep your appointments.
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    Why can't you come in on the weekend
    for once and work, so we can finish it?"
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    "No, I work at VW. I’m not
    available on weekends."
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    And from left to right, they
    always talk about shallowness.
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    "And you just talk
    and don’t do anything."
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    "You only want the adventure,
    but I have to make it happen."
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    "And additionally, I should
    give you the money, too."
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    Because the others are thrifty and usually
    don't have money left by the end of the month.
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    They get loans, right? You also see it
    now in the behavior of the companies.
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    So they argue with each other.
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    What should I do with my
    other 11 minutes of the talk?
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    The official German
    notion of a human is –
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    left, obsessive, right?
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    And I just want to comment on that.
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    Virtually everyone tries really hard to
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    officially teach us these characteristics,
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    not those over there.
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    I mean, if everyone works hard on
    raising their kids to be obsessive,
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    then how should they change?
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    And where to?
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    And I just want to comment on that.
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    I coined a term for this,
    "Ungewöhnung" (De-Habituation).
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    meaning they shouldn’t work
    so hard on teaching the children
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    how to limit themselves every day,
    because then it’s easier to change.
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    But I'm not saying you should bring up
    your children in the hysterical way.
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    That would be a bit too much.
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    Maybe we should take the middle way.
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    But in the current system
    we are getting the people used to
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    all these characteristics over here.
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    Approximately up to the master’s degree.
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    Then, they join a company and
    they tell them, "Do something!"
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    "Like what?"
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    "Change!"
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    "Yeah, but where to? Can I
    have a look at the roadmap?
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    Can you tell me what the milestones are
    and what I should do tomorrow?
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    Bit-sized?
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    And they're told, "Don’t just stand there
    and ask what to do: Change!"
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    And again, "Where to?" And then,
    we are standing there.
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    Do you understand?
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    That doesn't give us a good outlook
    into the "comfort zone of the future."
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    We only notice the change
    after it has happened.
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    But the obsessive ones already notice
    the change when their fear sets in.
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    There is something in the air that
    something is about to happen
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    and they recognize change very well,
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    because it's when they get scared.
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    And the hysterical ones really
    feel like doing something.
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    That is fundamentally different. Right?
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    I have written down some opposites.
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    Like I said, this is what a
    normal boss would say at work.
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    So here on the left side:
    "Avoid mistakes!", "Unity!",
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    "The slides have to have the real logo, and
    all slides have to match our corporate identity."
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    "The A-level exams must be the
    same across the country", and so on.
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    Unity, unity, unity.
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    Everything in the same bland color.
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    So that’s what they force
    onto us in daily life.
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    And in the management meetings,
    or "strategy meetings"
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    where you can let your
    thoughts and ideas roam,
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    think about a sustainable
    future and so on;
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    or at those psychological seminars where
    you talk about emotional intelligence
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    and what you have to
    do in normal life
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    they always say that stuff
    here on the right,
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    "Now act." or "You must be
    allowed to make mistakes."
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    Right? Or "Set yourself some goals." "Do things
    differently." "Don’t always ask for permission."
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    Sadly, we still don’t have
    a science for this,
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    business administration
    is strictly on the left.
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    For the right side, we only have appeals.
    It's hard to actually teach it to someone.
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    The problem is that the people on the left feel
    more like adults, and the people on the right
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    kind of represent
    our inner child.
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    The child is still spoiled and
    always wants something new,
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    it wants to go on adventures.
    That’s a bit dangerous
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    and that’s why it’s really
    difficult to stay a child.
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    At my home, they sometimes
    tell me that I’m still a child.
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    (Laughter) But that's okay.
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    It means I’m not too far
    on the left side yet.
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    Okay.
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    So I googled something.
    I took out my old report card,
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    had a look and found this.
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    I looked at what I was good at in school.
    "Ordnung" (organization) and "Fleiß" (diligence).
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    That's what it says up here. These are
    my actual report cards from school.
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    It says "Ordnung", "Fleiß", "Betragen"
    (conduct) and "Mitarbeit" (collaboration).
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    We got grades for that.
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    Are they still doing this?
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    Very similar.
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    If I googled correctly, they have now
    substituted it with more sophisticated
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    vocabulary like "social behavior" and
    "purposeful professional success whatever."
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    That’s what I’ve written there.
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    Can you see how the school is
    teaching us to become obsessive?
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    That's the implicit message.
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    I proposed new grades
    so that it's easier to see.
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    I simply made them up.
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    You can check them out
    and see if you like them.
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    I just took some other ones.
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    "Creativity, innovativeness, sense of humor."
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    [Slide: Constructive will. Proactivity &
    community spirit. Balanced self-confidence.]
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    Have you ever seen a job description
    requiring "a sense of humor?"
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    (Laughter)
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    Not even in marketing. (Laughter)
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    They should be able to make
    dumb jokes, be funny on demand;
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    that's marketing for you. (Laughter)
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    Funny on demand –
    that’s left again, right?
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    By now you’ve read everything.
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    A "winning appearance."
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    Imagine I went public with this,
    not just at TEDx,
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    but imagine I told that
    to the teacher union,
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    they'd crucify me.
    Isn't that strange?
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    But that is the stuff
    that's actually needed in a job.
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    You don't find that in job descriptions
    or general conduct grades. Right?
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    Of course, like every year,
    I’ve written a book about it,
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    and this time it is about
    professional intelligence.
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    Here I randomly wrote down
    some types of intelligence.
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    I just made them up. Those
    are the ones we should have.
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    People have intelligence anyway;
    you know it because you do.
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    Emotional intelligence,
    you probably don’t have it yet.
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    It's only 30 years old and not
    enough research has been done yet.
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    When they run projects
    and they go wrong,
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    they always sit together
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    and start whining and ask,
    "What went wrong?"
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    That is called "Lesson learned."
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    (Laughter)
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    And then it turns out
    that we had conflicts
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    and communication problems.
    We didn’t really talk to each other.
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    Blah blah blah blah.
    "You don’t have an EQ", they say.
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    Somehow, creativity
    is not allowed anymore.
  • 14:38 - 14:42
    There are TEDx videos about paper clips.
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    "Can you tell me 100 things …",
    and then they have this brass thing.
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    "Can you tell me 100 things
    you could do with a paper clip?"
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    If you are on the executive level,
    a manager like I was, then you say,
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    "Sticking traveling expenses together."
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    Can you name 100?
    You can't.
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    The moment I ask you, "Can you tell me
    100 ways?", your brain goes, "Oh, shit."
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    Do you understand?
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    The part of your brain that could do that
    has been switched off for a long time.
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    (Laughter)
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    I found statistics – you can look them up
    under this test – saying that
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    98 % of all children, around the age of five,
    are able to tell you 100 ways right away.
  • 15:20 - 15:21
    Try it one day.
  • 15:21 - 15:24
    Small children. Boys, girls.
  • 15:24 - 15:25
    Spotlight on! See their eyes shine.
  • 15:25 - 15:27
    The boy says,
    "I can poke the girls,
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    pick my ears, pick my nose,
    pick everything;
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    and behind…"
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    The girl says, "Jewelry here,
    jewelry there, piercings everywhere…"
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    They reach 100 just like that!
  • 15:37 - 15:40
    And then you see their eyes shine
  • 15:40 - 15:42
    as they are counting the ways,
    and you, on the other hand ...
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    (Laughter)
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    And the statistics are saying that 98 % of the
    people sitting here aren’t able to list 100 ways.
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    As five-year-olds you
    could do it; 98 % could do it
  • 15:54 - 15:57
    and now it’s exactly reversed
    so the statistics say …
  • 15:57 - 16:02
    So the truth comes out and there is this …
    I believe it was Kurt Tucholsky who said,
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    "Look at the children, how cute they are! What
    a pity that they become adults later in life."
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    (Laughter)
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    Look, that’s what you are. In the
    context of CQ, you are nothing.
  • 16:13 - 16:18
    "Talent for attraction", average Germans hate that.
    You are not allowed to do that, you know, stand out.
  • 16:18 - 16:25
    There are some rare exceptions
    like Paris Hilton and all the consultants.
  • 16:25 - 16:31
    Nobody has any vitality left. They have to announce
    nearly everyone a manager who still has a will.
  • 16:31 - 16:38
    And this here is "meaning",
    that’s why we’re here.
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    This is still the responsibility
    of the bloggers. (Laughter)
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    Well, what I want to is
    to get humans
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    to test these six types of
    intelligence on themselves.
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    We already have IQ and EQ.
    A big German newspaper
  • 16:50 - 16:54
    lets you test this online.
    Just enter "SZ IQ" or
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    "SZ EQ" in the internet.
    We should do this for the others, too.
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    Then we will realize
    that we are not at all
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    prepared for change
    or for a new world.
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    Because the obsessive ones only use
    their intelligence and nothing else.
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    Now I want to tell you some rules
    that they drilled into you as a child …
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    Or at least into me.
    [Slide: "Habit-forming"]
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    You heard stuff like
    "Love is something you earn",
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    "Pocket money must stay the same."
  • 17:31 - 17:33
    And, "We have to solve this
    consistently in the village,
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    so nobody is treated unfairly."
    "Let's all have coffee and cakes and discuss
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    how much it should be,
    how long they can watch TV", etc.
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    I want to use the last minutes to
    give you a short demonstration
  • 17:46 - 17:50
    on brainwaves …
  • 17:50 - 17:54
    To show that this is
    something in our brains.
  • 17:54 - 17:56
    [Slide: "Blocking of alpha-activity"]
  • 17:56 - 17:59
    This slide shows a normal EEG test.
  • 17:59 - 18:03
    You lie on the couch and
    think about holidays in Egypt.
  • 18:03 - 18:05
    That’s nice.
  • 18:05 - 18:07
    Close your eyes: Egypt.
  • 18:07 - 18:10
    Then, the doctor comes in
    and asks the usual question,
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    "Now, think of the number 1,000.
  • 18:15 - 18:17
    Keep subtracting 31 until you reach 0.
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    Really fast."
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    Well, 1,000, 969, nine hundred… Do you see
    what's happening? Your brain says,
    "Sorry, cannot do."
  • 18:28 - 18:36
    (Laughter) That is what I
    had in mind with this talk.
  • 18:36 - 18:37
    You laughed a few times.
  • 18:37 - 18:39
    I got you into the alpha wave mode
  • 18:39 - 18:41
    and you don't want beta waves now.
  • 18:41 - 18:43
    Beta waves are your
    average management meeting.
  • 18:43 - 18:45
    (Laughter)
  • 18:45 - 18:49
    Take a woman, a beautiful
    one. Any woman here.
  • 18:49 - 18:53
    Take a picture of her when
    she's thinking about Egypt.
  • 18:53 - 18:55
    That’s gonna be a great picture.
  • 18:55 - 18:57
    And then you say, "Watch out,
    I take a picture now."
  • 18:57 - 18:59
    Then she’s gonna look
    ugly on the picture.
  • 18:59 - 19:02
    These are beta waves.
    Like in a meeting.
  • 19:02 - 19:04
    (Laughter)
  • 19:04 - 19:07
    And that’s it what
    it actually looks like.
  • 19:07 - 19:11
    Now, this is just a chart.
    If you take a real picture,
  • 19:11 - 19:14
    it looks like that…
    But you can see it, right?
  • 19:14 - 19:16
    The three phases…
  • 19:16 - 19:19
    There are different waves,
    long, short, and so on.
  • 19:19 - 19:21
    You already know that?
  • 19:21 - 19:24
    You only get delta waves
    in a near-death experience
  • 19:24 - 19:26
    or an Indian Guru might
    have one for a second.
  • 19:26 - 19:29
    Theta waves occur during meditation.
  • 19:29 - 19:31
    Alpha waves are that Think-about-Egypt-thing
  • 19:31 - 19:33
    and beta waves are the meeting.
  • 19:33 - 19:36
    You can’t read it that well, what a pity.
  • 19:36 - 19:41
    On top: a newborn.
    You have delta waves up to 18 months.
  • 19:41 - 19:42
    Right?
  • 19:42 - 19:48
    A toddler, from around 18 months
    to 5.5 years, has theta waves,
  • 19:48 - 19:52
    which adults will never
    get back in their life…
  • 19:52 - 19:55
    They have those up to 18 months,
    then three years of theta waves,
  • 19:55 - 19:58
    then from age six alpha waves,
  • 19:58 - 20:01
    then unfortunately
    they become an adult,
  • 20:01 - 20:06
    approximately between
    15 and 20 years of age.
  • 20:06 - 20:10
    Then, in my age, you get
    alpha waves again.
  • 20:10 - 20:12
    Great, right?
  • 20:12 - 20:14
    (Laughter)
  • 20:14 - 20:17
    Well, beta waves are,
    "Don’t do that!" "Stop it!"
  • 20:17 - 20:19
    "Hold the spoon properly!"
  • 20:19 - 20:21
    The usual upbringing.
  • 20:21 - 20:24
    When grandchildren take a walk
    with grandpa, who has alpha waves,
  • 20:24 - 20:26
    he just looks at them.
  • 20:26 - 20:29
    Then the child says eventually,
    "It's nicer with grandpa."
  • 20:29 - 20:32
    And the parents say, "You weren't
    supposed to give them chips!"
  • 20:32 - 20:35
    And grandpa says,
    "I didn’t do anything."
  • 20:35 - 20:37
    Look, these are simply different waves.
  • 20:37 - 20:42
    An old man like me and a child
    have the same waves, alpha,
  • 20:42 - 20:45
    and the evil adults are in between.
  • 20:45 - 20:47
    There's one thing I'm worried about.
  • 20:47 - 20:53
    They try to get a child, with delta waves,
    a kind of apocalypse in the brain…
  • 20:53 - 20:56
    they try to teach them cleanliness
    and to maintain a sleeping pattern.
  • 20:56 - 20:57
    Do you see the problem?
  • 20:57 - 20:59
    The question is: Is the child
    even able to do that?
  • 20:59 - 21:01
    That’s a serious question.
  • 21:01 - 21:04
    Is it able to do that at all?
  • 21:04 - 21:07
    What are you doing with the child?
  • 21:07 - 21:09
    Why are you trying to get
    a child with theta waves
  • 21:09 - 21:14
    from 18 months to 6 years of age
    to learn English in kindergarten?
  • 21:14 - 21:15
    It is able to do that at all?
  • 21:15 - 21:18
    Does it even have a harddrive yet?
  • 21:18 - 21:21
    You want to scream
    "We want child-adequate welfare"
  • 21:21 - 21:26
    when someone… Do you understand?
    Are not nearly all the obsessive things
  • 21:26 - 21:29
    like organization, behavior,
    conduct, collaboration, diligence,
  • 21:29 - 21:32
    all the obsessions
  • 21:32 - 21:36
    are they not drilled into a child
    for eighteen months
  • 21:36 - 21:39
    during its theta state,
    it was really vulnerable
  • 21:39 - 21:41
    and couldn’t say anything against it?
  • 21:41 - 21:44
    Basically you messed with the BIOS of the child
  • 21:44 - 21:48
    so Windows 7 cannot fix
    anymore the BIOS which
  • 21:48 - 21:54
    has already been broken?
  • 21:54 - 21:56
    That's called "a mark".
  • 21:56 - 21:59
    "It left a mark on him."
  • 21:59 - 22:00
    German.
  • 22:00 - 22:03
    And then you want
    a "comfort zone of the future"
  • 22:03 - 22:07
    and turn him into a hysterical type?
  • 22:07 - 22:08
    I would be careful.
  • 22:08 - 22:11
    Take the slides with you
    and ask yourselves
  • 22:11 - 22:13
    if we’re not destroying people.
  • 22:13 - 22:15
    My clock shows zero.
  • 22:15 - 22:16
    I have to stop.
  • 22:16 - 22:18
    I have a lot more stuff.
  • 22:18 - 22:20
    I am not that old, but 60.
  • 22:20 - 22:22
    Approximately.
  • 22:22 - 22:26
    As I said before, I would like to see,
  • 22:26 - 22:30
    first of all, child education in
    accordance with the brain waves.
  • 22:30 - 22:33
    So that people don’t drill
    all the values into the children,
  • 22:33 - 22:39
    in EEG times that
    we cannot undo later.
  • 22:39 - 22:44
    And then we could start talking
    about differentiated education.
  • 22:44 - 22:47
    Bringing up every child individually,
  • 22:47 - 22:49
    depending on how it goes.
  • 22:49 - 22:52
    I have already talked about
    this a lot, also last year,
  • 22:52 - 22:54
    and I will keep on claiming the same,
  • 22:54 - 22:58
    I will repeat this at the end
    of each of my talks,
  • 22:58 - 23:01
    until something is done about it.
  • 23:01 - 23:04
    and until this uniformity finally stops.
  • 23:04 - 23:06
    The general uniformity in education
  • 23:06 - 23:08
    and work environments
    has to stop. It's obsessive,
  • 23:08 - 23:10
    and it has to change.
  • 23:10 - 23:11
    Thank you.
  • 23:11 - 23:15
    (Applause)
Title:
The comfort zone of the future or dehabituation | Prof. Dr. Gunter Dueck | TEDxRheinMain
Description:

In his talk, Prof. Dr. Gunter Dueck tries to explain the psychology of change. Is it possible that a lot of people were drilled in a way that prevents them from changing? All these fears are an outflow of too strict forming of habits in child education. Prof. Dr. Gunter Dueck makes the case for a good level of "Ungewöhnung" (De-Habituation) so that neither fears nor rage form the character.

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Video Language:
German
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDxTalks
Duration:
23:23

English subtitles

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